by Tom Clancy
Henderson would play along. His alternative was life in a maximum security penitentiary. After listening to the tape of his conversation in the cab, he’d made his confession in front of a court stenographer and a television camera.
The Pigeon
The ride to the Pigeon had been mercifully uneventful. The catamaran-hull rescue ship had a small helicopter platform aft, and the Royal Navy helicopter had hovered two feet above it, allowing Ryan and Williams to jump down. They were taken immediately to the bridge as the helicopter buzzed back northeast to her home.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” the captain said agreeably. “Washington says you have orders for me. Coffee?”
“Do you have tea?” Williams asked.
“We can probably find some.”
“Let’s go someplace we can talk in private,” Ryan said.
The Dallas
The Dallas was now in on the plan. Alerted by another ELF transmission, Mancuso had brought her to antenna depth briefly during the night. The lengthy EYES ONLY message had been decrypted by hand in his cabin. Decryption was not Mancuso’s strong point. It took him an hour as Chambers conned the Dallas back to trail her contact. A crewman passing the captain’s cabin heard a muted damn through the door. When Mancuso reappeared, his mouth couldn’t keep from twitching into a smile. He was not a good card player either.
The Pigeon
The Pigeon was one of the navy’s two modern submarine rescue ships designed to locate and reach a sunken nuclear sub quickly enough to save her crew. She was outfitted with a variety of sophisticated equipment, chief among them the DSRV. This vessel, the Mystic, was hanging on its rack between the Pigeon’s twin catamaran hulls. There was also a 3-d sonar operating at low power, mainly as a beacon, while the Pigeon cruised in slow circles a few miles south of the Scamp and Ethan Allen. Two Perry-class frigates were twenty miles north, operating in conjunction with three Orions to sanitize the area.
“Pigeon, this is Dallas, radio check, over.”
“Dallas, this is Pigeon. Read you loud and clear, over,” the rescue ship’s captain replied on the secure radio channel.
“The package is here. Out.”
“Captain, on Invincible we had an officer send the message with a blinker light. Can you handle the blinker light?” Ryan asked.
“To be part of this? Are you kidding?”
The plan was simple enough, just a little too cute. It was clear that the Red October wanted to defect. It was even possible that everyone aboard wanted to come over — but hardly likely. They were going to get everyone off the Red October who might want to return to Russia, then pretend to blow up the ship with one of the powerful scuttling charges Russian ships are known to carry. The remaining crewmen would then take their boat northwest into Pamlico Sound to wait for the Soviet fleet to return home, sure that the Red October had been sunk and with the crew to prove it. What could possibly go wrong? A thousand things.
The Red October
Ramius looked through his periscope. The only ship in view was the USS Pigeon, though his ESM antenna reported surface radar activity to the north, a pair of frigates standing guard over the horizon. So, this was the plan. He watched the blinker light, translating the message in his mind.
Norfolk Naval Medical Center
“Thanks for coming down, Doc.” The intelligence officer had taken over the office of assistant hospital administrator. “I understand our patient woke up.”
“About an hour ago,” Tait confirmed. “He was conscious for about twenty minutes. He’s asleep now.”
“Does that mean he’ll make it?”
“It’s a positive sign. He was reasonably coherent, so there’s no evident brain damage. I was a little worried about that. I’d have to say the odds are in his favor now, but these hypothermia cases have a way of souring on you in a hurry. He’s a sick kid, that hasn’t changed.” Tait paused. “I have a question for you, Commander: Why aren’t the Russians happy?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Kind of hard to miss. Besides, Jamie found a doctor on staff who understands Russian, and we have him attending the case.”
“Why didn’t you let me know about that?”
“The Russians don’t know either. That was a medical judgment, Commander. Having a physician around who speaks the patient’s language is simply good medical practice.” Tait smiled, pleased with himself for having thought up his own intelligence ploy while at the same time adhering to proper medical ethics and naval regulations. He took a file card from his pocket. “Anyway, the patient’s name is Andre Katyskin. He’s a cook, like we thought, from Leningrad. The name of his ship was the Politovskiy.”
“My compliments, Doctor.” The intelligence officer acknowledged Tait’s maneuver, though he wondered why it was that amateurs had to be so damned clever when they butted into things that didn’t concern them.
“So why are the Russians unhappy?” Tait did not get an answer. “And why don’t you have a guy up there? You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew what ship he escaped from, and you knew why she sank…So, if they wanted most of all to know what ship he came from, and if they don’t like the news they got — does that mean they have another missing sub out there?”
CIA Headquarters
Moore lifted his phone. “James, you and Bob get in here right now!”
“What is it, Arthur?” Greer asked a minute later.
“The latest from CARDINAL.” Moore handed xeroxed copies of a message to both men. “How quick can we get word out?”
“That far out? Means a helicopter, a couple of hours at least. We have to get this out quicker than that,” Greer urged.
“We can’t endanger CARDINAL, period. Draw up a message and get the navy or air force to relay it by hand.” Moore didn’t like it, but he had no choice.
“It’ll take too long!” Greer objected loudly.
“I like the boy, too, James. Talking about it doesn’t help. Get moving.”
Greer left the room cursing like the fifty-year sailor he was.
The Red October
“Comrades. Officers and men of Red October, this is the captain speaking.” Ramius’ voice was subdued, the crewmen noticed. The incipient panic that had started a few hours earlier had driven them to the brittle edge of riot. “Efforts to repair our engines have failed. Our batteries are nearly flat. We are too far from Cuba for help, and we cannot expect help from the Rodina. We do not have enough electrical power even to operate our environmental control systems for more than a few hours. We have no choice, we must abandon ship.
“It is no accident that an American ship is now close to us, offering what they call assistance. I will tell you what has happened, comrades. An imperialist spy has sabotaged our ship, and somehow they knew what our orders were. They were waiting for us, comrades, waiting and hoping to get their dirty hands on our ship. They will not. The crew will be taken off. They will not get our Red October! The senior officers and I will remain behind to set off the scuttling charges. The water here is five thousand meters deep. They will not have our ship. All crewmen except those on duty will assemble in their quarters. That is all.” Ramius looked around the control room. “We have lost, comrades. Bugayev, make the necessary signals to Moscow and to the American ship. We will then dive to a hundred meters. We will take no chance that they will seize our ship. I take full responsibility for this — disgrace! Mark this well, comrades. The fault is mine alone.”
The Pigeon
“Signal received: ‘SSS,’” the radioman reported.
“Ever been on a submarine before, Ryan?” Cook asked.
“Nope, I hope it’s safer ’n flying.” Ryan tried to make a joke of it. He was deeply frightened.
“Well, let’s get you down to Mystic.”
The Mystic
The DSRV was nothing more than three metal spheres welded together with a propeller on the back and some boiler plating all around to protect the pressure-bearing parts of the hull.
Ryan was first through the hatch, then Williams. They found seats and waited. A crew of three was already at work.
The Mystic was ready for operation. On command, the Pigeon’s winches lowered her to the calm water below. She dived at once, her electric motors hardly making any noise. Her low-power sonar system immediately acquired the Russian submarine, half a mile away, at a depth of three hundred feet. The operating crew had been told that this was a straightforward rescue mission. They were experts. The Mystic was hovering over the missile sub’s forward escape trunk within ten minutes.
The directional propellers worked them carefully into place and a petty officer made certain that the mating skirt was securely fastened. The water in the skirt between Mystic and Red October was explosively vented into a low-pressure chamber on the DSRV. This established a firm seal between the two vessels, and the residual water was pumped out.
“Your ball now, I guess.” The lieutenant motioned Ryan to the hatch in the floor of the middle segment.
“I guess.” Ryan knelt by the hatch and banged a few times with his hand. No response. Next he tried a wrench. A moment later three clangs echoed back, and Ryan turned the locking wheel in the center of the hatch. When he pulled the batch up, he found another that had already been opened from below. The lower perpendicular hatch was shut. Ryan took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder of the white painted cylinder, followed by Williams. After reaching the bottom Ryan knocked on the lower hatch.
The Red October
It opened at once.
“Gentlemen, I am Commander Ryan, United States Navy. Can we be of assistance?”
The man he spoke to was shorter and heavier than himself. He wore three stars on his shoulder boards, an extensive set of ribbons on his breast, and a broad gold stripe on his sleeve. So, this was Marko Ramius…
“Do you speak Russian?”
“No sir, I do not. What is the nature of your emergency, sir?”
“We have a major leak in our reactor system. The ship is contaminated aft of the control room. We must evacuate.”
At the words leak and reactor Ryan felt his skin crawl. He remembered how positive he had been that his scenario was correct. On land, nine hundred miles away, in a nice, warm office, surrounded by friends — well, not enemies. The looks he was getting from the twenty men in this compartment were lethal.
“Dear God! Okay, let’s get moving then. We can take off twenty-five men at a time, sir.”
“Not so fast, Commander Ryan. What will become of my men?” Ramius asked loudly.
“They will be treated as our guests, of course. If they need medical attention, they will get it. They will be returned to the Soviet Union as quickly as we can arrange it. Did you think we’d put them in prison?”
Ramius grunted and turned to speak with the others in Russian. On the flight from the Invincible Ryan and Williams had decided to keep the latter’s knowledge of Russian secret for a while, and Williams was now dressed in an American uniform. Neither thought a Russian would notice the different accent.
“Dr. Petrov,” Ramius said, “you will take the first group of twenty-five. Keep control of the men, Comrade Doctor! Do not let the Americans speak to them as individuals, and let no man wander off alone. You will behave correctly, no more, no less.”
“Understood, Comrade Captain.”
Ryan watched Petrov count the men off as they passed through the hatch and up the ladder. When they were finished, Williams secured first the Mystic’s hatch and then the one on the October’s escape truck. Ramius had a michman check it. They heard the DSRV disengage and motor off.
The silence that ensued was as long as it was awkward. Ryan and Williams stood in one corner of the compartment, Ramius and his men opposite them. It made Ryan think back to high school dances where boys and girls gathered in separate groups and there was a no-man’s-land in the middle. When an officer fished out a cigarette, he tried breaking the ice.
“May I have a cigarette, sir?”
Borodin jerked the pack, and a cigarette came part way out. Ryan took it, and Borodin lit it with a paper match.
“Thanks. I gave it up, but underwater in a sub with a bad reactor, I don’t think it’s too dangerous, do you?” Ryan’s first experience with a Russian cigarette was not a happy one. The black coarse tobacco made him dizzy, and it added an acrid smell to the air around them, which was already thick with the odor of sweat, machine oil, and cabbage.
“How did you come to be here?” Ramius asked.
“We were heading towards the coast of Virginia, Captain. A Soviet submarine sank there last week.”
“Oh?” Ramius admired the cover story. “A Soviet submarine?”
“Yes, Captain. The boat was what we call an Alfa. That’s all I know for sure. They picked up a survivor, and he’s in the Norfolk naval hospital. May I ask your name, sir?”
“Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius.”
“Jack Ryan.”
“Owen Williams.” They shook hands all around.
“You have a family, Commander Ryan?” Ramius asked.
“Yes, sir. A wife, a son, and a daughter. You, sir?”
“No, no family.” He turned and addressed a junior officer in Russian. “Take the next group. You heard my instructions to the doctor?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain!” the young man said.
They heard the Mystic’s electric motors overhead. A moment later came the metallic clang of the mating collar gripping the escape trunk. It had taken forty minutes, but it had seemed like a week. God, what if the reactor really was bad? Ryan thought.
The Scamp
Two miles away, the Scamp had halted a few hundred yards from the Ethan Allen. Both submarines were exchanging messages on their gertrudes. The Scamp sonarmen had noted the passage of the three submarines an hour earlier. The Pogy and Dallas were now between the Red October and the other two American subs, their sonar operators listening intently for any interference, any vessel that might come their way. The transfer area was far enough offshore to miss the coastal traffic of commercial freighters and tankers, but that might not keep them from meeting a stray vessel from another port.
The Red October
When the third set of crewmen left under the control of Lieutenant Svyadov, a cook at the end of the line broke away, explaining that he wanted to retrieve his cassette tape machine, something he had saved months for. No one noticed when he didn’t return, not even Ramius. His crewmen, even the experienced michmanyy, jostled one another to get out of their submarine. There was only one more group to go.
The Pigeon
On the Pigeon, the Soviet crewmen were taken to the crew’s mess. The American sailors were observing their Russian counterparts closely, but no words passed. The Russians found the tables set with a meal of coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast. Petrov was happy for that. It was no problem keeping control of the men when they ate like wolves. With a junior officer acting as interpreter, they asked for and got plenty of additional bacon. The cooks had orders to stuff the Russians with all the food they could eat. It kept everyone busy as a helicopter landed from shore with twenty new men, one of whom raced to the bridge.
The Red October
“Last group,” Ryan murmured to himself. The Mystic mated again. The last round trip had taken an hour. When the pair of hatches was opened, the lieutenant from the DSRV came down.
“Next trip will be delayed, gentlemen. Our batteries have about had it. It’ll take ninety minutes to recharge. Any problem?”
“It will be as you say,” Ramius replied. He translated for his men and then ordered Ivanov to take the next group. “The senior officers will stay behind. We have work to do.” Ramius took the young officer’s hand. “If something happens, tell them in Moscow that we have done our duty.”
“I will do that, Comrade Captain.” Ivanov nearly choked on his answer.
Ryan watched the sailors leave. The Red October’s escape trunk hatch was closed, then the Mystic’s. One minute later there
was a clanging sound as the minisub lifted free. He heard the electric motors whirring off, fading rapidly away, and felt the green-painted bulkheads closing in on him. Being on an airplane was frightening, but at least the air didn’t threaten to crush you. Here he was, underwater, three hundred miles from shore in the world’s largest submarine, with only ten men aboard who knew how to run her.
“Commander Ryan,” Ramius said, drawing himself to attention, “my officers and I request political asylum in the United States — and we bring you this small present.” Ramius gestured toward the steel bulkheads.
Ryan had already framed his reply. “Captain, on behalf of the president of the United States, it is my honor to grant your request. Welcome to freedom, gentlemen.”
No one knew that the intercom system in the compartment had been switched on. The indicator light had been unplugged hours before. Two compartments forward the cook listened, telling himself that he had been right to stay behind, wishing he had been wrong. Now what will I do? he wondered. His duty. That sounded easy enough — but would he remember how to carry it out?
“I don’t know what to say about you guys.” Ryan shook everyone’s hand again. “You pulled it off. You really pulled it off!”
“Excuse me, Commander,” Kamarov said. “Do you speak Russian?”
“Sorry, Lieutenant Williams here does, but I do not. A group of Russian-speaking officers was supposed to be here in my place, but their helicopter crashed at sea last night.” Williams translated this. Four of the officers had no knowledge of English.
“And what happens now?”
“In a few minutes, a missile submarine will explode two miles from here. One of ours, an old one. I presume that you told your men you were going to scuttle — Jesus, I hope you didn’t say what you were really doing?”
“And have a war aboard my ship?” Ramius laughed. “No, Ryan. Then what?”
“When everybody thinks Red October has sunk, we’ll head northwest to the Ocracoke Inlet and wait. USS Dallas and Pogy will be escorting us. Can these few men operate the ship?”